


Clint and Bucky: Lost and Found

by twangcat



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Avengers AU, Clint and Bucky are Bros, Imagine if CA:WS took place very soon after Avengers 1, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Then the team saved Bucky, This fic takes place shortly after that, they know what it is to be unmade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twangcat/pseuds/twangcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Bucky sees Clint limp into the Avengers tower pretending his ribs aren’t bruised while brushing his wild blond hair out of his eyes, Bucky smiles. When Clint immediately starts railing at Tony for blasting the guy Clint was fighting because, “I didn’t need rescuing Tony, I had him!” Bucky does a double take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clint and Bucky: Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you morethancupcake for bouncing this idea around with me today!
> 
> I posted a version of this on tumblr, but this is an fleshed out and proofread version of that ficlet. I hope you enjoy.

The first time Bucky sees Clint limp into the Avengers tower pretending his ribs aren’t bruised while brushing his wild blond hair out of his eyes, Bucky smiles. When Clint immediately starts railing at Tony for blasting the guy Clint was fighting because, “I didn’t need rescuing Tony, I had him!” Bucky does a double take.

Pre-war, Bucky spent most of his life taking care of Steve. Then Steve became a superhero and he didn’t need him the same way. Bucky knows that Steve never really _needed_ him, but Bucky liked to feel like he was wanted. He got a rush out of watching Steve try to take down a guy twice his size and when the fight went bad, yes, he liked being the guy to save Steve. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just who he is: he’s got a soft spot for the underdog, the little guy that won’t back down from a fight.

It’s also how he got his first kiss from Steve. The skinny fool had picked a fight with someone bigger than Bucky and the brute had busted Steve’s lip and conked him hard in the noggin twice before Bucky saw what was happening. Afterwards, Bucky had been high on adrenaline from the fight, and he’d wanted to kiss Steve countless times before, but watching Steve dance around the apartment acting out all three parts of the fight, Bucky couldn’t stop laughing because Steve’s imitation of the neanderthal's stunned look when he fell to the ground was spot on, it was just too much for him to resist and and he had pulled Steve up and into a kiss before he even realized what he was doing.

Steve’s enthusiastic “Finally!” warmed his heart and they never looked back.

Loving superhero Steve was an adjustment. Sometimes Bucky missed the way tiny Steve fit into his arms, but come what may, Steve was still Steve and Bucky would love him whatever shape he came in. Steve would always be the only one for him.

************

Who the hell is Bucky?

Bucky remembered Steve before he remembered himself. The memories came back as incoherent pieces and it took him a long time to understand that tiny Steve and big Steve in his memories were the same person as the Steve who helped him get through his therapies every day. Once that clicked in, all the rest started to fall into place. Steve had alway been his center and it was easy to rebuild his life around him.

Bucky joined the Avengers and he and Steve found a new footing, taking care of each other in different ways from what they had before. But Bucky misses taking care of his little buddy and the blond disaster with a bow who never backs down from a challenge fits so neatly into that missing gap that he starts asking Steve about him. Who is the little human that’s wormed his way onto this team of superheroes? This blond spitfire that fought tooth and nail to climb his way to the top and spit in the eye of anyone who tried to tell him he couldn’t?

He learns from Steve about Loki and how Clint was never the same afterwards. Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he recognizes that wariness in Clint’s eyes. The constant questioning if what he’s seeing is real, if what he’s feeling are his own emotions. It’s a fear Bucky can relate to but doesn’t like to think about. Steve says that Clint blames himself for the deaths on the helicarrier and he took the loss of Agent Coulson much harder than anyone else.

Steve’s always been about as subtle as tank, so Bucky isn’t surprised when he pairs Bucky with Clint at the next training exercise. He’s been pushing Bucky to try and build relationships with the other Avengers for a while now, but this time Bucky doesn’t mind. Tony looked at Bucky like he was an exciting experiment, Bruce looked at him with pity, but Clint just looks at him like he’s a person. Not even a superhero, just a person. Bucky is surprised by how refreshing he finds that.

The training exercise is a success and when Clint finally relaxes, he actually turns out to be a fun guy. He also knows all the secret ways to get around Avengers tower and has access to one of Tony Stark’s credit cards. Bucky doesn’t question any of this and Clint seems delighted to have found someone who doesn’t try to tell him what to do. It’s fun to get under Steve’s skin again and find new ways to make him roll his eyes in exasperation at the silly pranks he and Clint come up with.

Within a week, all of Steve’s underwear have been replaced by Captain America bootie shorts, Tony starts receiving mail subscriptions for support groups for short men, and Jasper (the new avengers liaison who only eats healthy food) has started getting candy grams delivered to him daily.

Steve isn’t sure if he regrets pushing Bucky and Clint together or not.

When all of the cereal boxes in the Avengers kitchen are replaced by Captain America Frosted Flakes, he’s sure he regrets it. When he hears Bucky laugh up in the vents while Steve and Tony are being pelted by nerf arrows, he changes his mind again. Anything that makes Bucky laugh again is worth it.

**************

Clint’s the only human on a team of super humans and he’s just as much a hero as the rest of them, but he does tend to break more easily, so Bucky thinks he should have someone looking out for him.

Bucky tries to watch out for him, but it’s hard to watch out for a man who doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies.

Clint takes missions he shouldn’t, ignores his handlers, dives off of buildings and just assumes someone will catch him. Most of the time someone does. Bucky wonders sometimes if Clint has a death wish. He told Steve countless times that he acted like he had a death wish, but with Clint he wonders if it’s not an act at all.

It’s a few months later Bucky finds Clint drunkenly staggering around the top of the Avengers tower, screaming at the sky. Bucky stays in the shadows and watches.

He’s heard the team talk about Coulson, and he knows Clint took his death hard, but nobody talks about it much. But today was Coulson’s birthday and Clint is raging at the heavens with all the fury of a hurricane. “It wasn’t enough for a God to unmake me into nothing? Fuck you! I was never worth shit and I know it. But how dare you take the one good man I’ve ever known? Why do any of us lesser people get to live?”

Clint shouts down at the streets hundreds of feet below, “How dare any of you go on living when he’s gone?!”

Clint stumbles against the big letter A and pounds his fist against it in helpless fury. A normal human wouldn’t have heard his next words over the howling wind but Clint’s sobbed “Phil loved me. How am I supposed to go on without him?” is just loud enough for Bucky to hear and he imagines what his life would be without Steve.

Bucky watches Clint until he is passed out on the roof and then he gently picks up the most fragile resident of the tower and carries him back inside.

Bucky cries when he kisses Steve that night because Steve is the center of his universe and without him maybe Bucky would have a death wish too.

Afterwards, when he tells Steve what he heard, Steve goes quiet for a while and Bucky thinks there is nothing they can do. But the next day Steve asks Tony to dig into Coulson’s personal file so that they can have a more personal and meaningful memorial for him in the tower.

Tony finds a tiny folder hidden in the SHIELD database called TAHITI and it doesn’t take long for him to call all the Avengers together.

Steve’s moral outrage is as intense as anything Bucky ever saw from tiny Steve and it warms his heart. “Fury had no right to lie to us about this and I’m going to get Coulson back! Who’s with me?”

Natasha and Clint stand as one, silent and their faces unreadable, but they are holding hands so tightly Bucky half expects to hear the sounds of bones cracking.

Bruce stands and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I don’t like being lied to. I thought SHIELD was getting better.” Shoulders hunched, he looks down at the floor. “I don’t think you want the Big Guy storming through a hospital, but I’ll be there to do what I can.”

Tony just says, “Was there ever any doubt, Cap? Let’s get our Agent back.”

********************

No SHIELD base could survive the wrath of the Avengers and they are out in full force.

They blast down the main door and after that, there isn’t much resistance. There are a few agents that will be nursing broken bones and sleeping off the effects of Tony’s latest knockout gas, but the Avengers keep the body count down to zero. It’s something they’ve been working on.

Tony’s got a room number in his file but this whole facility seems to be set up just to take care of Coulson, so he’s not hard to find.

Steve is the first one to bust down the door but then all the Avengers pile in after him. There’s not much space in the tiny hospital room so Steve, Bucky and Natasha are in the front row, Tony, Clint and Bruce are behind them.

Lying on the hospital bed is the shell of a man. He’s sickly pale and his head has been shaven revealing an ugly bulbous scar around most of his skull. He also has so many tubes and monitors connected to him that Bucky momentarily flashbacks to his time with HYDRA, strapped to a chair with no way out while they prepared him for yet another procedure.

Steve’s hand on his brings him out of it and Bucky remembers to breathe. They are here for Coulson and they are here for Clint.

The commotion wakes up Coulson and he blinks blearily at the group of costumed superheroes standing in his hospital room.

No one says anything for a long moment and then Natasha bursts into a violent Russian curse that Bucky knows mean Fury’s days are numbered if he doesn’t have a damn good reason for this and ‘the world was going to end’ is probably the only answer that will spare his life.

Natasha yanks Clint forward and pushes him to the bed.

Clint doesn’t seem to be able to move, but when Coulson’’s eyes focus on him, Bucky can feel the charge in the air.

Coulson’s voice is scratchy and weak and it takes him two tries to gasp out, “Clint, is it really you?”

But Clint his shaking his head and trying to back away but Bucky steps forward and grabs him by the shoulders to help ground him. Bucky’s been there before. He’s thought the love of his life was dead and wasn’t able to believe that what he was seeing wasn’t just another hallucination of what he wanted most.

So Bucky holds on to Clint and says quietly, “It’s okay. It’s real. I see him too.” Then he gently pushes the trembling superhero forward.

Clint’s first step is shaky but the second one is a little stronger. His voice quivers and breaks. “Phil? You’re alive?”

Phil’s voice is weak but he tries to make a joke, “I died a few times, but I’m keeping score and you’ve still died twice more than me.”

Clint launches himself at Phil and the monitoring equipment starts beeping like crazy. Phil grunts in pain when Clint lands on top of him, but then he’s clutching Clint just as tightly.

The peaceful moment is disrupted by a commotion in the hallway. Maybe the SHIELD agents have regrouped, maybe Fury is here to try and explain what he’s done, maybe the gates of hell have opened up. It doesn’t matter, nothing is going to get through them.

The Avengers position themselves to stand guard around Coulson’s bed.

No one is going to hurt the humans on their team.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you thought, so please, leave a comment :)
> 
> You can also find me on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/twangcat


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